Red Hair
by Iavas
Summary: If you meet someone in the library with red hair, who would you think he is?


**Disclaimer: **

_Weiss Kreuz_ is the property of Project Weiss© and Koyasu Takehito.   
Concept and characters used without permission. 

No profit is gained.

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* _these are made up. Don't go looking for a book of this title featuring such a character by this author. Doesn't exist!_

_** Ran as in Ranma, not as in orchids._ _Both are pronounced the same._

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Post-Kapital, although I suppose it could've taken place during Glühen. Sakura is the heroine of this story, and who the redhead is, we may only speculate. I'm not too sure who he is myself, although the similar name does tend to throw people off balance. O___o

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**_Red Hair_**

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The sunlight was streaming in watery rivulets through the dusty lace curtains that surrounded the windows of the musty bookstore, dancing in strange patterns upon the yellow pages of the heavy tome she held in her hand, the pages littered with sentences written in some obscure or archaic language. The words were just chicken scratching in a book that was falling apart, and she could barely muster enough interest to decipher them. The patterns of the flecks of light streaming across the page, in contrast, were far more interesting than the tragedy of the High Priestess of Lak'hr Devoleth, Ser'fyra VII, and her fall from grace*; she mused somewhat absent- mindedly that if sunlight were blue, the world would look as though it had been submerged in water.

Water...The crumbling ruins sinking into the murky depths of ocean...Ocean. great bodies of water... 

A shadow fell upon the page she was trying - and failing - to read, and she glanced upwards, though not so much out of curiosity than instinct. A young man (could 24 or so really count as young anymore? She could not be sure) was settling into the seat across from her, head bent and eyes hidden discreetly behind a pair of tinted glasses. The rays of the setting sun streaming in through the westward window beside them seemed to set his hair ablaze with shades of gold, orange, red, and scarlet. She wondered if his hair would burn if she were to touch it with the tips of her fingers and comb each strand separately, yet the strands seemed to be as fluid as water. Instead, she watched him glance at her impersonally as he slid into the seat and opened his book; and so they sat, each reading a different book underneath the same window by the same ray of afternoon sun. 

A particularly strong gust of wind blew the curtains into her face, and then there was suddenly a waft of the fragrance of flowers. The pages of her book flapped in confusion as the wind turned the pages, and the rose petals she'd used the book to press began to scatter in bewildered flights around the table top. The young man had looked up again, and his eyes seemed to be twinkling merrily from behind his glasses as he regarded the rose petals scattered around the sturdy wooden table, especially ones that had the audacity to land on his book, which had obediently remained on the same page despite the wind's promptings. Then, reaching forward with one elegant gesture, he plucked the petals from his book and the desk deftly and deposited them onto her open book even as she tried to sweep the petals along the edge of the table in her hand. 

"Thank you." She flashed him a quick smile as she, with great precision, placed the petals back into the book and closed it with a firm thud. 

"_Geisha*_?" he asked, arching an eyebrow as he read the title amusedly. "An interesting choice, although I find that much of Salvador's* later works are filled with too much angst for my taste." He reached forward and spun the book around so that he could admire the cover illustration of a beautiful and exotic Japanese courtesan properly. His hands were slender and graceful, like the hands of someone who learned calligraphy or some other art that required strength and poise of the hand. They were the hands an artist might paint in some indefinable moment, such as caught in the act of pulling open the curtains or resting against the keys of a piano. The fingers rested against the worm leather cover for a moment, brushing against the peeling gilt of the golden lettering. 

She smiled slightly in response. "Happy people living secluded, happy lives always prefer happy stories." 

He grinned, a very much amused smile upon his lips. "Or maybe I like to read happy stories because I lack happiness in my own life." 

"Then you are wasting your time looking for happiness in stories," she answered automatically, the words leaving her lips before she realized. 

This time, he did laugh. "Fuyuki Ran," he introduced amiably, reaching out a hand for her to shake. "Ran as in 'chaotic.**'" 

"Tomoe Sakura." She shook his hand, yet her eyes were focused on his face. She could not help but stare entranced at his laughing, happy face and wonder if another could laugh as carelessly as this one was now. But then, the other had, once. The pictures were the only proof that he could. 

"What are you staring at?" The redhead had stopped laughing and was now gazing at her bemusedly, the smile never leaving his face. 

She smiled a little, tucking a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. Her hair had grown out, a little at a time because she kept trimming it, alarmed by its surprisingly fast growth rate. At first, she had adamantly kept it short, yet later, she'd realized that boundaries would always begin to fade. "Sorry, it's nothing." she explained. "For a minute there, you reminded me of any old friend, whom I haven't seen in ages."

"Do I resemble him?"

She laughed at the absurdity, because there really was no resemblance other than the color of their hair. "No. You laugh too much to resemble him in any way."  
  
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_04-27-04_

_Weiss Kreuz_


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